The appeal of a 2006 decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma to retain a Ten Commandments monument on the Haskell County Courthouse lawn was argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver Colorado on October 4, 2007. Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the National ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, presented the oral argument to the Tenth Circuit. He was advised by Micheal Salem, an ACLU of Oklahoma cooperating attorney who handled the case at the District Court trial with former ACLU of Oklahoma Staff Attorney Tina Izadi. The ACLU ofRead More →

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author Jim Hightower will visit Tulsa at a Bill of Rights Celebration hosted by the ACLU of Oklahoma on Saturday, November 10, 2007. The event will be held in the Manchester-Geneva Room of the Doubletree Hotel, 616 W. Seventh Street in downtown Tulsa. Festivities will begin with a reception at 6:30 p.m. A banquet will follow at 7:00 p.m. Hightower broadcasts daily radio commentaries that are carried in more than 100 commercial and public stations, on the web, on Armed Forces Radio, Radio for Peace International, One World Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio. Each month, he publishes aRead More →

House Bill 1804, passed during the 2007 session of the Oklahoma Legislature and signed by Governor Brad Henry, will require local law enforcement, state agencies, municipal government and small businesses to enforce federal immigration restrictions. The new law, the Oklahoma Taxpayers and Citizens Protection Act (OTCPA), will take effect on November 1, 2007. ACLU of Oklahoma Legal Director C.S. Thornton and Program Coordinator Tamya Cox have been analyzing the OTCPA in conjunction with the ACLU National Immigrants’ Rights Project to determine what portions of the statute might be vulnerable to challenges on constitutional grounds. In addition, Thornton, Cox and Legal Intern Manish Rajwar have metRead More →

Representatives from four local ACLU offices joined Lenora Lapidus of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and Ashwini Hardikar of the ACLU Human Rights Program at the 51st Annual International Commission on the Status of Women and Girls hosted by the United Nations at its headquarters in New York. ACLU of Oklahoma Executive Director Joann Bell and ACLU personnel from Delaware, Michigan and Puerto Rico participated in sessions held March 5-7, 2007. The goal of the sessions attended by the ACLU delegates was to insert language on conditions of incarceration into a one-page proposal on the treatment and rights of women and girls. Bell was chosenRead More →